After the attack at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., that left 49 people dead, Governor Cuomo formed the LGBT Memorial Commission to honor the fight for equal rights and remember victims of hate, intolerance and violence. A request for designs for the new memorial went out in October. It is to be built in Hudson River Park near the waterfront piers that have played a key role in the city’s history as both a meeting place and a haven for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people
— NY Times

Designed by a Brooklyn-based mixed-media artist, Anthony Goicolea, the LGBTQ monument consists of nine boulders, some bisected with glass that acts as a prism and can emit a subtle rainbow. Meant to be communicative, usable and complimentary to the landscape, the design was inspired by sites... View full entry

A monumental recreation of the destroyed Arch of Triumph in Palmyra, Syria, has been unveiled in London’s Trafalgar Square.

The 1,800-year-old arch was destroyed by Islamic State militants last October and the 6-metre (20ft) model, made in Italy from Egyptian marble, is intended as an act of defiance: to show that restoration of the ancient site is possible if the will is there.
— theguardian.com

For more on the relating topics in this article check out these links:Palmyra after ISIS: a first look at the level of destructionBefore + after photos of Syria's devastated heritageAnother Grade II listed building loses its protected status in north east EnglandLondon's V&A to host a robot... View full entry

Bank buildings have become bars. Football grounds have been turned into prestige housing. All things must pass. Buildings that have outlived their purpose have no right to be preserved perpetually in a Prince Charles-style attempt to stop the clock on history. Sentimentality about an imagined past is a British disease. For all that, the emotional link between a building like the Washington Post’s and the people who once worked there will live on, for years to come.
— theguardian.com

More pieces on the cultural history of demolished or renovated structures:Saving Buildings with Social Media (Or Not)The Folly of Saving What You Kill"Historic Status" won't protect against demolitionInteractive Decay View full entry

archaeologists have found several recesses in rock formations in Wales that match the size and shape of Stonehenge's bluestones, leading to theories that the monument may have been erected in Wales first, before being moved to its present site in Salisbury Plain.

The researchers also discovered evidence of what they described as “a loading bay" from where the massive boulders could have been dragged away.
— artnet.com

Wales is over 130 miles / 209 kilometers from Stonehenge's current site in Salisbury Plain – a distance that would have taken Neolithic people over 500 years to transport the monoliths over, according to Professor Mike Parker Pearson, a British late prehistory professor at UCL who led the... View full entry

[Sara Zewde] argues that while the traditional monument commemorates a singular event or individual by placing an object in a space that is a break from its surroundings, the 400-year practice of African enslavement demands a different approach.

“For Afro-descended people, you wake up every day with the legacy of slavery,” she says. “How do you deal with that spatially?”

One approach is to translate cultural practices into spatial ones.
— Next City

Using new international measurement standards and technology not available in the past, NOAA’s National Geodetic Survey has calculated the official architectural height of the Washington Monument to be 554 feet 7 11/32 inches [...].

Although the newly established architectural height differs from the historical height of 555 feet 5⅛ inches, neither the starting point nor the so-called “standard deviation” used for the original 1884 measurement is known [...].
— noaa.gov

Team Lord of Toronto was announced today as the winner to design the new Canadian National Holocaust Monument in Ottawa, Canada's capital.

The team's proposal, titled "Landscape of Loss, Memory and Survival", was selected out of six finalists who were invited to present their concepts to a jury of professionals and then to the public during the national design competition.
— bustler.net

Led by co-president of Lord Cultural Resources Gail Dexter-Lord, the Toronto-based team also includes Daniel Libeskind (architect), Edward Burtynsky (artist–photographer), Claude Cormier (landscape architect), and Doris Bergen (subject-matter advisor).More info about the project on Bustler. View full entry

More than 150 cracks have been repaired, rainwater leaks have been sealed, and the 130-year-old Washington Monument is set to reopen Monday for the first time in nearly three years since an earthquake caused widespread damage.

The memorial honoring George Washington has been closed for about 33 months for engineers to conduct an extensive analysis and restoration of the 555-foot stone obelisk that was once the tallest structure in the world.
— blogs.wsj.com

Silicon Valley long prided itself on building world-changing technologies from the humble garage, or the nondescript office park. The new spaces are more distinctive, as companies seek to build a consumer profile [...]

[There] is a sense that nothing is permanent, that any product can be dislodged from greatness by something newer. It’s the aesthetic of disruption: We must all change, all the time. And yet architecture demands that we must also represent something lasting.
— mobile.nytimes.com

New York-based Turkish architect Selim Vural, founder of architecture and interior design firm Studio Vural, has shared with us his design for a Gezi Park Monument. The memorial commemorates the recent protests on Istanbul's Taksim Square against the planned construction of a shopping mall in... View full entry

The poet and author and one of the memorial's consultants, Maya Angelou, told The Washington Post, yesterday, the quote makes King seem arrogant. Actually, she put it in harsher terms.

"The quote makes Dr. Martin Luther King look like an arrogant twit," she said.
— kcrw.com

Today, All Things Considered's Melissa Block spoke to memorial's executive architect, Ed Jackson Jr., who explained the quote was paraphrased because of design constraints. At first, he said, the quote was going to be placed on the south face of the monument, but instead the designers decided... View full entry

We don’t even see his feet. He is embedded in the rock like something not yet fully born, suited and stern, rising from its roughly chiseled surface. His face is uncompromising, determined, his eyes fixed in the distance, not far from where Jefferson stands across the water. But kitsch here strains at the limits of resemblance: Is this the Dr. King of the “I Have a Dream” speech? Or the writer of the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech?
— nytimes.com